


love and its wildness

by rievu



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Past Relationship(s), a rejection of what soul marks entail, and how people forge love regardless of a mark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 12:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19199296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: “We are not soulmates.”Morrigan looks up at the Warden, and slowly, ever so slowly, she says, “No, we are not.”// how morrigan and mahariel love each other in an antithesis of the soulmate au





	love and its wildness

“We are not soulmates.”

Morrigan looks up at the Warden, and slowly, ever so slowly, she says, “No, we are not.”

Mahariel stretches her limbs out and hangs her hands dangerously close to the campfire. Morrigan watches as the golden firelight burnishes Mahariel’s Taint-white hair and eyes. “I do not mind,” Mahariel says. Her tone is light and nonchalant so that Morrigan has a chance to turn away and to deny this. Mahariel glances over at Morrigan and asks, “Do you?”

Morrigan runs her thumb over the surface of her golden necklace and feels the weight of it press against the soul-mark she bears nears her heart. She looks at Mahariel once more, looks at the way the darkness of her skin contrasts against the gold of the firelight and the silver of her hair and her armor, looks at the quiet fear lying deep inside Mahariel’s blanched eyes.

And she says, “No.”

 

* * *

 

“It is a wonderful thing to spend life living in the skin of another,” her mother tells her. “Keep everything you have learned in life close to you, including your bitterness and your regrets, and let them shape your body. Then, live in the skin of another to become something else entirely. This is how people live. This is how we will live, but better.”

This is why Flemeth teaches Morrigan how to shed her shape as readily as dandelions shed their seeds, and this is why she shows Morrigan the shapes of the wild whether it be raven, bear, spider, or wolf. Morrigan soon revels in the novelty of hiding herself underneath the skin of another. She swiftly moves from girl to wild thing back to girl easily as breathing. Girlhood and wildness are not so far apart, after all.

She meets Mahariel first in the skin of a bear, and even though she does not remember it as well as Mahariel does, she thinks that it was incredibly apt of Mahariel to see the human inside of the bear. Mahariel has that quality about her. Morrigan thought that it was simply a matter of observation, but it’s not. Mahariel simply has the makings and the trappings of a hero-to-be, and that enables her to navigate ordeals like the Mage Tower and Redcliffe.

When Morrigan tells Mahariel this, she laughs. “I guess at what the best decision might be, and then, I make it without looking back,” she says. “I have… I have learned how to let go of regret.” She gives Morrigan a sad smile and tells her, “If you live by holding onto every single regret you have, then you will live a miserable life. Better to be kind than to become hardened by the bitter things in life.”

Morrigan stares incredulously at Mahariel who returns to her work. She’s repairing her armor, and Morrigan watches Mahariel stitch the leather and the ironbark together. What Mahariel said was completely antithetical to what Flemeth ingrained in her memory. Morrigan still doesn’t quite believe Mahariel either.

 

* * *

 

“What shape are your soul-marks?” Alistair asks one night as he’s cooking dinner over the campfire.

“Soul-marks?” Sten muses. “Explain.”

Leliana claps her hands together and says, “Oh! They are marks that we are born with that will let us know who our soulmate is. Some bear names, some bear shapes, some bear the first words that their soulmate will say to them, but we all have them.” She glances at her own arm and gives Sten a half-hearted smile. “I’m afraid I haven’t found mine yet, but I still have the mark. And you?”

“The qunari have them, but we call them by a different name,” Sten says. “We do not let them determine our lives though. The Qun shapes us into who we must be. We do not need the mark to tell us.”

Morrigan envies the easiness with which Sten says it.

Flemeth always told her that soulmates were dead weight, points of weakness that a person did not need. “Why find a soulmate when you can find more of yourself within your body? Love is useless, contentious, a beast of a thing that people like to romanticize. We do not need it, girl of mine, we do not need it at all,” Flemeth once cackled just before she shed her shape to wear a bear’s. Morrigan remembers being six and toddling after her mother, trying to slip into another skin as easily as her mother did. When she grew older, those lessons were repeated over and over again, sometimes emphasized with bruises and slaps that reddened her skin.

Morrigan knows these lessons. They were ingrained in her memory as surely as the shapes her mother taught her. But there is another part of her that yearns for love to be true, for the soul-marks to mean something more. It’s not worth the time or struggle though. True love isn’t real, and besides, Morrigan has no idea who the mark will lead her too. People always say that everything will slot into place perfectly, but most people do not know how or what Morrigan _is._ She is too rough and inhabits too many things, too many shapes, to truly comprise an easy fit with another person. The other half of Morrigan desperately wants a soulmate though. She wants to see what the other half of her soul is like, to see if this soulmate will understand her thoughts more than her mother ever did, to live a life of freedom and love beside this mysterious person.

Morrigan’s startled from her thoughts when Alistair says, “I don’t know who mine is supposed to be either, Leliana. What does everyone’s look like though? Is there anyone who’s met their soulmate already?”

Mahariel coughs on her water, and she drops her waterskin by her side. Alistair pounces on the stumble and eagerly asks, “Ooh, Mahariel? I wouldn’t have expected it, but who’s the lucky person? Your soulmate, that is? You’ve met them already, haven’t you?”

Mahariel casts her gaze to the side and mumbles, “I suppose, I do not, I—”

Morrigan swallows hard. Somehow, Mahariel’s answer makes her heart sink deep and low. That irritates Morrigan, actually. She _knows_ that Mahariel isn’t her soulmate. She’s seen Mahariel’s mark when Mahariel was barely breathing after the incident at the Tower of Ishal. It was right there on her abdomen beside the reddened indents in her skin where Flemeth’s dragon claws dug into Mahariel’s armor and skin. It didn’t match Morrigan’s own, but now, Morrigan resentfully stares at the iron cooking pot instead of meeting Mahariel’s gaze.

“I too would be interested to hear,” Zevran chuckles. “I have not met mine either.” His amused expression sobers a touch as he says, “I thought I did, but I was mistaken. Perhaps that is your situation as well?”

“No, no, I met him,” Mahariel sighs. She tucks a stray lock of her hair behind her pointed ear and idly taps her fingers against the edge of her armor.

Morrigan’s gaze slowly draws back towards Mahariel, and she gazes at Mahariel. Her eyes are lidded as she stares at her fingers, and Morrigan wonders what stills her tongue. Surely, finding your soulmate is a celebratory event. Is it because she misses him? The thought leaves a bitter taste on the back of Morrigan’s tongue.

Mahariel slowly looks up, and her gaze drags over Morrigan. Morrigan flushes and turns her head. Perhaps Mahariel caught her staring. But Mahariel exhales, slow and even. “He died,” she says. “Or at least, he should be dead by now. He was tainted at the same time I was, but the clan managed to find me and not Tamlen.”

She bends her head, and her curling hair falls down around her to hide her face. They all gape at Mahariel with abject horror — Alistair most of all — and Morrigan can’t stop staring at the places in Mahariel’s hair where it was permanently whitened from the Taint.

“The mark has not disappeared, so I guess he is out there somewhere, still living,” Mahariel whispers. “But I would not wish that fate on anyone. Better to die quickly than to continue living as a ghoul with the Taint.” She looks up and studies her own hands. “I was lucky that Duncan came along in time. He saved me from the Taint. He is the only reason why I’m still living right now.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alistair chokes out. The horror is still vast and unyielding on his face, but Mahariel smiles at him sadly.

“No, it is alright,” Mahariel says. She steeples her hands together, lets her fingers twist and twine with each other, as she gives all of them a weak smile. “My greatest hope is find Tamlen.”

“And what then?” Morrigan can’t help but ask. Her voice is thorny, nettled over with this unbidden irritation.

Mahariel spares a glance towards Morrigan, and in that single look, Morrigan sees silent acceptance ringing Mahariel’s Taint-silvered eyes. “I plan to end his misery,” Mahariel replies. Her voice is too simple and too flat for the words she says, but she continues, “Tamlen does not deserve a life as a ghoul. A quick death would be the best mercy I could give.”

“And what of you?” Morrigan says aghast. “You bear your own Taint, do you not?” Alistair gives Mahariel a darting look, and Morrigan snorts, “Don’t be daft, Alistair. I spent days over your unconscious bodies after Ostagar. Did you think I would not notice the darkspawn taint in both of you?”

Alistair grumbles something under her breath — likely inconsequential in Morrigan’s opinion — but Mahariel quietly says, “Better me than someone else. I am willing to bear the burden. Besides, I think I am one of the luckier ones.”

“True Warden, through and through, aren’t you?” Zevran comments.

Morrigan’s gaze remains steadfastly on Mahariel though as Mahariel ducks her head and resumes her work. The conversation is abandoned, left to be forgotten, but Morrigan remembers.

 

* * *

 

Morrigan wakes up early every morning to fasten her necklace and her charms safely and securely on her neck and her wrists. Her necklace comes first, hammered out of bronze in the Chasind style. It forms a veritable collar that laces over her collarbones, and right over her sternum, a large, carved charm forms the centerpiece of the necklace. It lies directly over her sternum and hides a mottled mark that Morrigan would rather die than expose to the world.

Sometimes, she won’t even take off the necklace to sleep. All of her other bangles and charms and beads, woven in her hair and worn on her wrists, are tucked into a locked box for safekeeping, but the necklace remains on. Zevran once comments on the grooves left in her skin from the metal pressing into her skin, but Morrigan sniffs and turns away from him. She won’t acknowledge it at all.

Mahariel only raises an eyebrow once about it.

They’re both covered in darkspawn blood, so they find a nearby stream to wash off the stains clinging to their armor and their skin. Morrigan glances at Mahariel and says, “Surely you don’t have such childish attitudes and qualms like Alistair has about bathing, do you?”

Mahariel laughs and says, “No. In my clan, all the girls would bathe together as quickly as possible since we had the entire clan waiting to use the stream next. Go ahead; I will not mind.”

Morrigan quickly divests herself of all the dirty clothing. However, she does not remove her necklace. She scrubs off the blood with brisk motions and then, with gentler fingers, she wipes off the blood off her necklace.

“Would it not be easier to remove the necklace before cleaning it?” Mahariel asks. She strips off her armor too.

Morrigan tenses and doesn’t say anything. She keeps her words clenched between her teeth instead. Mahariel looks at her carefully, as if she’s cataloguing Morrigan’s movements and minute expressions. Morrigan can’t bring herself to look her in the eye, but thankfully, Mahariel doesn’t say anything in response and works silently. There’s one stain that Morrigan works on, splashing the water between the slats of bronze woven on the leather thong keeping the pieces together. “Would you like some help with that?” Mahariel finally asks. “You do not need to remove it.”

Morrigan’s fingers still over her necklace and hesitates. Half of her makes her want to shed her skin, raise her hackles, and snarl at the impudent question. The other half of her shivers in her current skin of woman, of human, of _marked,_ and waits. Mahariel cocks her head, waiting for Morrigan’s response. Morrigan doesn’t know what to say nor what she wants.

Well, that’s a lie. Morrigan knows what she wants. She just finds herself at a mental impasse when it comes to the thing that she wants. It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff with the rocks crumbling under her feet. The tremble of a set of wings on her shoulder blades, the sensation of claw and fur replacing her fingers and toes, and the skins of a thousand other shapes call her, incessantly, ceaselessly, constantly. They call on her to turn away, but Morrigan is a fickle, contrary creature. She turns towards Mahariel instead.

Morrigan doesn’t say a word. Instead, she turns her head and yields access to Mahariel who leans forward before looking back up at Morrigan’s yellow-raven eyes. Morrigan nods once, and Mahariel starts to wipe away the blood trapped between the bronze and the leather. Her fingers probe carefully and reach places that Morrigan normally would have had to take off the necklace to clean. At one point, Mahariel lifts up the necklace just enough to reach the final and smallest slat of bronze and the piece of leather knotted strongly to it. This is when she sees the soul-mark emblazoned right over Morrigan’s sternum, annoyingly close to her heart.

Mahariel holds her breath; Morrigan hears it in the absence of sound. But Mahariel breathes again and does not say a word. Instead, she sets the necklace back and settles it right above the mark so that it’s hidden away once more. Just before Mahariel pulls away, she taps the charm over the mark once and then twice. “For good luck,” Mahariel tells her.

“A silly sentiment,” Morrigan tries to scoff, but it falls short. Not sharp enough. Never sharp enough for Mahariel.

Mahariel steps out of the stream and reaches for a rag to wipe the water off her limbs. “For some, perhaps,” she says. Once she’s done with the rag, she starts to methodically put on fresher clothing from her satchel, and each inch of her skin gets covered with cloth and ironbark as she proceeds.

“Luck is nothing more than an excuse people rely on when situations do not work out to their own benefit. If it’s for good, then it is a sham that people use to hide their true motivations,” Morrigan snaps back. The words are familiar, like worn stones, to her because this is something that Flemeth has trained into her mind over and over again. Morrigan tilts her head and adds, “Like molting skins in favor of another.”

Mahariel pauses, halfway through slipping on her gauntlets. “Is that really what you think?” she asks. Morrigan nods sharply, and Mahariel exhales out a long, shuddering breath. “Then,” she says lightly. “Then I must come up with a better excuse to explain why I think you are deserving of good things if not good luck.”

Mahariel takes her leave once the last word spills off her lips, and she disappears between the woods and bushes in the direction of their camp. Morrigan lingers by the stream, mulling over Mahariel’s words, before she gives into the shudder of wings and melts into coal-black feathers. She takes flight as a raven and circles around in the dusk, trying to flee the inconstant weakness of worry that plagues her.

 

* * *

 

They find Tamlen.

It’s not what Morrigan expected at all. Once, she tried piecing together a picture of Tamlen in her head out of all the few details Mahariel gave about him. She doesn’t know why she does this to herself, but her incessant curiosity drives the cogs of her mind to generate some image. An elf with blond hair, branches stretching across his cheeks, bright eyes, pretty smile, and the same mark as Mahariel emblazoned somewhere on his skin. Thoroughly disgusting. Morrigan hated it and tried to push the thought out of her mind as quickly as the image came, but the thought of it resolutely sticks in her mind like tar.

But now, when Morrigan looks at the ghoul that stumbles onto the edge of their camp, she sees none of it. Instead, she sees blotchy skin, pockmarked with blight and rot. The Taint has taken the color from his eyes like Mahariel’s. His hair is thinning and falling out, and his flesh looks curdled and distorted. Mahariel shudders when she sees him, and during their brief conversation, Morrigan can hear the man babble about some song that the Archdemon sings and how he loved Mahariel. The latter subject stings, largely because it is a truth that she has not wanted to admit for a while. It is also a truth that lies parallel to another truth that she tries to bury and hide deep inside her ribs and covered over with the skins of other things.

In the end, Mahariel kills Tamlen out of mercy. She does not speak for the rest of the night and continues onward without another mention of her soulmate. Morrigan drifts by Mahariel’s tent, only to see Mahariel staring vacantly into the fireplace. The gold of the firelight glazes over Mahariel’s pair of silver eyes and casts her dark skin with a warmer hue. Morrigan finds that Mahariel’s eyes are a twin set of Tamlen’s Tainted eyes, and she rakes her gaze over the blanched streaks in Mahariel’s wild, curling hair. Mahariel could have been like Tamlen: blotched and pockmarked and rotted and Tainted. Morrigan shudders at the thought. Mahariel still doesn’t speak when Morrigan sits down beside her, but Mahariel does reach out to hold Morrigan’s hand with a desperate grip.

Later, much _much_ later, Morrigan notices that the soul-mark once dotting Mahariel’s abdomen is gone. She glimpses it when Wynne starts healing the wounds Mahariel sustained in a previous fight. When the old crone’s hands move away, Morrigan sees only a broad expanse of Mahariel’s dark skin. Morrigan turns away abruptly, feeling like she’s seen something never meant to be seen, and at the edge of the camp, she starts running in the form of a wolf. She comes back in the skin of a woman again, only to find Mahariel waiting for her by Morrigan’s tent, far away from the rest of the other bedrolls and tents their motley party gathers in.

“Was there something wrong?” Mahariel asks when Morrigan slips out of the shadows.

“‘Tis nothing,” Morrigan archly replies. She settles down by Mahariel and starts building a small fire out of the magic lying at her fingertips. “Why do you ask?”

“You left so suddenly,” Mahariel tells her. “I was worried.”

“I am perfectly capable of defending myself,” Morrigan retorts. “Surely you’ve seen me in battle enough times to realize this simple truth.”

“I know,” Mahariel sighs. She leans back and braces herself against the spongy ground. “I just don’t like the thought of losing more people, and I worry. Irrationally so, sometimes, but I do. That includes you, _lethallan.”_

“My, my,” Morrigan hums. “My dear Warden, do not fret. I do not die as easily as a commoner or a simple beast. It will take far more to bring me down than most others.” Her eyes dart over to Mahariel who flushes when Morrigan tacks on the new epithet. She’s never called Mahariel things like _dear_ before.

Mahariel curls her hands and presses them against the ground more firmly as she says, “Like I said, it’s irrational of me. But still, I cannot help but worry for the people I care most about. I have lost one person already that was dear to my heart. I would rather not lose another.”

The words catch on the nooks and crannies of Morrigan’s mind: like yarn caught on a razored edge, spider-silk caught in the brambles of the Wilds, meat clinging to claw and talon and whatever else hides in Morrigan’s flesh. _Dear to my heart,_ she repeats to herself. But it’s a false hope. What else can it be?

“You are… I care for...” Morrigan says. She stumbles over the first words — uncharacteristic of her, and she curses her fool of a voice for betraying her so — and she bites down on the rest of her words. Mahariel’s moon-bright eyes gaze at her tenderly, and the words die down in Morrigan’s throat.

_“Ma serannas,”_ Mahariel says achingly. “I know, and I thank you for it.”

 

* * *

 

As much as Morrigan dislikes admitting it, she cherishes each gift that Mahariel gives her. It’s another point of weakness, another item of contention that Morrigan quietly simmers over. She drafts reasons to tell Flemeth as to why she accepts. She makes up explanations for the sudden bout of softness she’s suffering that Flemeth will surely rebuke at the end of all of this when Morrigan holds the god-soul in her belly. But for now, she has freedom clenched in her hands, and damn Flemeth, she’ll keep Mahariel’s gifts.

First is a silver brooch that Mahariel barters for in the Brecilian forest. The whorls of the silver are lovingly crafted around a gleaming gemstone, and the entire thing is soaked through with Dalish magic. Morrigan doesn’t think that Mahariel can sense it, but there are charms of protection and safe dreams layered and woven over the metal of the brooch. Mahariel gives her magic tomes, a golden pendant from the markets of Orzammar, and most importantly, Mahariel gives her Flemeth’s grimoire.

Mahariel gives her the grimoire while she is still spattered with Flemeth’s blood and while she has scores and scratches down her body from Flemeth’s claws. Morrigan looks at the wounds and the blood as she wonders how many skins her mother shed and wore in her final battle against Mahariel. Morrigan wishes that she learned how to heal when she sees the ragged edges of Mahariel’s wounds, but no, all she has is the skins her mother taught her how to wear.

She runs her hand down her mother’s grimoire. She remembers seeing it in her mother’s hands ever since she was young, and now, it’s finally in her hands. Her real, human hands. Morrigan marvels at the wonder and looks up at the greater wonder in front of her.

Mahariel. Despite the blood and gore still clinging to her armor, Morrigan still thinks that Mahariel looks beautiful. She bears the kindest smile that Morrigan’s ever seen, and no, she doesn’t count the ones that she sees from simpering maids or Leliana, that irritating nightingale of a lay sister from Lothering. No, Mahariel holds a simpler smile in her features that makes it seem all the more kinder in her face.

“Why?” Morrigan asks in a single breath.

Mahariel nods towards her and says, “Because you asked.”

Morrigan exhales the rest of the trapped breath in her lungs and wonders if Mahariel knows the gravity of what she just did for _her._ She went out and killed one of the greatest legends in Fereldan history, one of the revered — and feared — figures of the Dalish clans in Ferelden, and if not that, faced down one of the fiercest dragons in this age and other ages past _simply_ because Morrigan _asked._ That makes her feel warm and heady, but the disbelief doesn’t slip off her face.

Mahariel sighs and reaches up to caress Morrigan’s cheek, and for once, Morrigan does not feel like shrugging the gentle gesture aside. From anyone else, she would have slapped the offending hand away. For Mahariel, she resists the urge to lean in closer. “I think you are deserving of good things,” Mahariel tells her softly.

“I think we tend to be in a shortage of that,” Morrigan huffs. “Look around you, Mahariel, at all the blight and rot and Taint. Not to mention the myriad of fools you seem to have a penchant for attracting.”

“No, no,” Mahariel laughs. “Look at me, Morrigan.” Her laugh is a puff of breath that shakes her shoulders and aggravates her wounds. She grimaces with pain but then, she drag her hand down Morrigan’s cheek, down her neck and to the place right above her sternum. As she taps, she says, “For good luck.”

“You know I don’t believe in that,” Morrigan sighs. She’s reminded of a stream, and it feels so far away and yet, so close. She glances down at Mahariel’s hand on her chest and says, “But you make me believe in strange things.”

A coy smile flickers at the edge of Mahariel’s mouth. “And what would that be?” she asks in her lilting voice.

Morrigan arches her brows as she says, “Luck, for one.”

“More detail would be lovely,” Mahariel laughs. She nudges Morrigan with her least-wounded arm and gives her a wink. Incorrigible little elf.

“Demanding, aren’t you. ‘Twas only meant to be a simple answer,” Morrigan retorts.

Mahariel lifts her hand up from Morrigan’s necklace and traces the line of Morrigan’s body from her shoulder down to her wrist. “I have never received anything like a simple answer from you, Morrigan, and that is something I cherish,” she muses. “Do tell more.”

“You’ve grown a silver tongue in the span of a night, Mahariel,” Morrigan says. She meant it to be a warning, but she fails to add enough cut-glass sharpness to her tone.

Mahariel flutters her eyelashes: an act that Morrigan almost laughs at and one that Mahariel definitively laughs at. Once she’s sure that Morrigan’s full attention is on her, her voice drops an octave as she purrs, “I’m sure we could think of other uses for such a silvered tongue then.”

Morrigan blinks, and she feels like the space between them now is charged with electricity or magic, humming and vibrating between them both. Morrigan looks at Mahariel — dark skin, whitened irises, corkscrewed hair — and finds her beautiful. She reaches up to press her thumb underneath the charm of her necklace, right against her soul-mark, and briefly wonders if this is right, if this is what love is meant to be, if her mark was truly wrong this entire time.

Morrigan has never been one to follow the rules though. She ignores the pull in the back of her mind — the pull that is animal fear and instinct and Flemeth’s old words wrapped up into one — and leans in ever so slowly towards Mahariel. She touches Mahariel gently, navigates the places of her wounds with careful touch, and braces a spot on her body that will take the force of her touch without bleeding anew. That’s when she kisses Mahariel. Mahariel kisses back and twists her fingers in Morrigan’s hair, sweet and yearning and _tender._

They do not kiss for long. One of Mahariel’s wounds from Flemeth reopens, and she hisses with pain against Morrigan’s lips. Morrigan pulls away to inspect the wound and quietly curses her mother for interfering with this, even beyond her death. Instead of kissing Mahariel again, she tugs her to Wynne’s tent and waits outside until Wynne finishes her work.

Later that night, Mahariel comes to Morrigan’s tent with re-knitted skin and mild scars that are a far cry from the gaping, weeping wounds that they once were. She pulls off her armor, piece by piece, and then, she moves over to tug Morrigan’s clothing off her limbs. She skates the pads of her fingers over the birthmarks and the moles that Morrigan has dotted over her body. Mahariel carefully kisses each one. Then, she comes to the necklace that Morrigan still has on. Her fingers pause by the border of it, and when Mahariel looks up, Morrigan nods.

Mahariel carefully takes the necklace off, and Morrigan places it in her lockbox, right by the silver brooch and the golden pendant. When Morrigan straightens up again, Mahariel wraps her hands on the swell of Morrigan’s hips and pulls her flush to her own body. She lays a kiss and presses it deep against the soul-mark still marked over Morrigan’s sternum. It’s annoyingly close to her heart, and Morrigan swears that she can feel it pounding in her ears. Surely Mahariel would be able to hear in that place as well.

Mahariel rises up slowly, leaving a trailing path of kisses from Morrigan’s breasts back up to her neck. It is a sweet, tender thing, and Morrigan doesn’t know how to react. In all her experiences, sex has always been a thing about money where both parties pay with money and teeth and brutal passion that ravages through her body. Pleasure and pain both mingled together, if anything, but Mahariel’s procedure is only pleasure and no pain. Aching tenderness, perhaps.

Morrigan holds her breath — clenches it between her canines — before she runs her teeth over her tongue and feels the elongated points in them. Even now, the tremble and the call of the wild beckons to her. Flemeth’s words ring out in her mind once more. _Love is useless, contentious,_ Flemeth cackles in her mind. _Hold the bitterness close instead and let that give you another skin to live with._

Morrigan chokes the thoughts down by thinking, _Flemeth is dead. She has no hold over me anymore._ In another memory, she remembers Mahariel saying, _Better to be kind than to become hardened by the bitterness._

She looks at Mahariel in front of her, and in the shadows of her tent, Morrigan leaves behind her doubts — none from Flemeth, none about soul-marks and predetermination and love in all of its complicated, unnecessary, _contentious_ things — and kisses Mahariel once more.

 

* * *

 

The morning after, Morrigan wakes up to see the distant dawn start to stretch its long rays out across the sky. She stares at the clear skies and glimpses the birds in the distance. She knows their shapes as well as she knows her own: the coverts along the wings, the primary feathers, the sensation of the wind carrying her and her wings across the land. But now, the call is not nearly as strong because she has nothing to escape from and nothing to ignore. Flemeth was wrong, and that realization is a weight off her shoulders. The call of the wild doesn't shake and rattle her bones nearly as much now that she knows this truth about her self. She deserves love. She is able to love. She does not have to craft bitterness into a skin and wear it over a series of other skins built just the same. She gazes at the flock and reflects back on Mahariel and herself. Her mark doesn't feel nearly as heavy on her chest, and instead, she feels lighter inside. She feels like she could fly right now.

Mahariel crawls out of the tent and watches the flock with her. "Are you going to fly?" she asks.

Morrigan looks back at her lover and twitches her lips into a smile. She kisses Mahariel's forehead and tells her, "Of course." 

"Stay safe then," Mahariel murmurs as she embraces Morrigan. Morrigan returns the gesture but does not need to say what they both know.  _Always,_ they think together. 

Then, Morrigan turns and sheds her shape as swiftly as she did once upon a time in the Korcari Wilds. It takes only a breath and then, she is taking flight in a thunder of wing-beats made of night-black feathers. She takes flight and soars up in the sky, skirting along the edges of the horizon and chasing after the dawn as it progresses further and further in the skies. For all her lies, Flemeth was partially right about one thing. It is a wonderful thing to spend life living in the skin of another, but Morrigan now knows that there is a certain joy in wearing the first skin and embracing life in that manner as well. 

Morrigan flies, knowing that she is loved regardless of a mark that she was born with, regardless of the baggage she carries with her from her childhood, regardless of what the world wants from her. She no longer worries about a nameless, faceless soulmate that lives somewhere in the eddies and whirlpools of the world. 

She is happy with Mahariel.

 

* * *

 

Morrigan has spent a good part of her life living in the skin of another, but for once, she peels herself out of the layers that she has hidden underneath. She ignores the indelible mark that lies just above her sternum and steps towards Mahariel, bare of anything that she has hidden herself with before.

Mahariel smiles at her, and although Morrigan’s eyes stray towards Mahariel’s abdomen where the absence of a soul-mark lies, Mahariel embraces her, skin to skin and heart to heart. _“Ar lath ma,”_ Mahariel whispers against the skin of Morrigan’s neck.

Morrigan’s hands slowly come up to trace Mahariel’s spine, knob by knob by knob, and she pulls one hand away to press against her own, mismatched mark on her chest. Mahariel’s breath stills, but Morrigan continues upward until she has her hands tangled in Mahariel’s curling hair. “I love you too,” Morrigan dares to say.

She can feel Mahariel’s lips curve into a smile against her skin, and Morrigan thinks that this is what it means to love. Beyond a mark, beyond a thread of fate, beyond the skins of other things and whatever else lies in the world around them, _this_ is what it means to be soulmates, to be lovers, to share hearts together and breathe the same life.

They are not soulmates, but Morrigan loves Mahariel just the same.

**Author's Note:**

> don't get me wrong; i love soulmate aus. i love reading the fluff and i love reading about how people manage to find each other, but i always thought that the typical soulmate au clicked together a little bit too perfectly. i wanted to write about people falling in love regardless of who their soulmate was or what their marks were. i think this veered away from that original inspiration and turned into a character study of morrigan instead, but i'm not mad about that.
> 
> the mahariel is the same mahariel depicted in another fic i wrote called ["singing the sun into flight"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17674085) .


End file.
